One More Taste (One and Only Texas #2)(16)
“Haylie had a bit of a rough start today as my secretary,” he added, tossing the tie on top of the discarded jacket. “She was really nervous, which surprised me.”
Shifting his weight to one leg, he slipped out of his shoe, then repeated the move on the other. Until that very moment, Emily had never thought of socks as intimately personal before, but oh my God. Knox’s stockinged feet, the outline of his toes against the thin weave of the beige fabric, made her feel like he’d shown her a sliver of his most intimate self. She swallowed hard. “I’m sure she’ll do better tomorrow.”
As would Emily. No more covert missions to Knox’s bedroom.
Knox sat back on the bed and pressed his knuckles into the mattress, looking at her with honest, if troubled eyes, and his face completely devoid of pretense. “Are you sure I’m not making a mistake with Haylie? Ty thinks I am.”
What was Emily, his advisor? Her focus slipped to his stockinged feet again. “No. Not a mistake. She’s going to rise to the occasion. I’m sure of it.”
For reasons that turned Emily’s stomach if she thought on them too hard, Haylie needed the job perhaps even more than Emily needed the new restaurant.
Knox studied her, perhaps weighing her sincerity. “Why? Tell me about her. Why was hiring her the right move? And why didn’t her dad think so?”
What could Emily say without betraying Carina’s confidence? Her friend had needed someone to share the burden of the secret Haylie had entrusted her sister with. “The thing about Haylie is that, for her whole life, her parents coddled her and gave her everything she wanted without demanding anything from her. The problem with that kind of princess treatment is that it doesn’t build up a person’s confidence. It only breaks it down.”
“They didn’t coddle Carina?”
The idea brought a smile to her face, it was so preposterous. “No. She was the victim of oldest child syndrome. Until recently, she was kind of the family doormat.”
“What changed?
Emily wished there was a different answer to that question. She wished Carina could’ve found her own voice and her own power without Decker’s help. She wished Carina could have internalized what Emily had been telling her for years, that she needed to follow her heart and stand up to her family, but it took a man sweeping onto the scene and telling her the exact same thing for the words to sink in. But such was life. “She married James Decker. And he helped her find herself.”
Knox popped the top two buttons of his shirt open. If his belt came off next, Emily was out of there, post-haste. But he only laid back on the bed and threaded his hands together behind his head. Her gaze slipped of its own volition to the flatness of his abs, the way his shirt strained and stretched across his chest, then lower, to the curve of fabric outlining his groin. Oblivious to her perusal and lost in thought, he moved a hand down to rest on his stomach. What a hand. Big, strong, a thick wrist and long fingers.
Knox Briscoe was stunning. Way too goddamn stunning for his own good. Disgust arrived with the next wave of lust that rippled through her. How dare she be attracted to this … this … interloper? This invader who’d swept in and assumed power over her and the people she cared about. It had to stop immediately.
“Just because Haylie was dealt a tough hand doesn’t mean she’s qualified for the job,” he said. “As I told you, I’m not here to run a charity program for the Briscoes and their friends.”
Ouch. “Haylie’s life with Wendell, the guy she married, is not…” Emily was dancing perilously close to the truth, but if it helped Haylie hang on to her first good chance to change and grow, then Emily had to try. “She’s not happy. And I don’t believe she thinks highly enough of herself to change that. She doesn’t need your charity, but she could use a lucky break, a chance to rise.” Like me.
Except not like her because Emily knew her worth, and she’d known it for a long, long time. “Did you agree to this challenge so you could pump me for information on the Briscoes? Because my loyalty is to them, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed.” He sat up and pinned her with an inscrutable gaze. “And no, I didn’t hire you with the hopes that you’d share Briscoe family secrets with me.”
Another thought occurred to her. “But that’s why you offered Haylie her job, isn’t it?”
His eyebrows flickered.
She was shocked that he was being so honest with her. Then again, he’d been honest all along, hadn’t he? Brutally so. He behaved like a creature at the top of the food chain, with no fear of getting eaten. Which, she supposed, was the truth. “You don’t expect anyone to surprise you. What a boring way to go through life.”
Only a slight downturn of his lips betrayed his displeasure at her assessment. “Look at you, knowing so much about me.”
The tension in the room was rising again. Emily shifted, unnerved anew by the intimacy of it all, battling him in his bedroom while he undressed. Why did every encounter with this man turn uncomfortably intense? Would they ever have a normal conversation instead of a chess match? “If you’ll excuse me, I have ingredients to fetch.”
She’d taken two steps into the hall when he called to her. “Emily?”
She allowed herself a dramatic wince, then turned.